Enough With The Baby Shower Games Already

Ladies, listen. I have been to my fair share of baby showers — some of them even my own — and I have one simple, totally doable request: can we stop it with these godforsaken baby shower games already?

They’re the worst. The absolute worst.

Nobody wants to guess what flavor the poop is. Really. NOBODY. You may think it’s cute to melt a candy bar in a diaper because, HAHAHAHA, that new mama’s gonna be dealing with her share of messy shit in a few short weeks, and isn’t it hilarious to joke about all the different textures and consistencies she’s about to buy bulk-sized Hazmat suits in order to clean up? But it’s not. Not even a little bit. Between my three kids, two dogs, and myself, I have my own piles of shit (and I do mean piles) to deal with at home. I don’t come to a party to play around in more of it in the name of camaraderie.

And how about baby trivia games? I do not want to guess how many diapers a baby uses in a year or how much it costs to raise a single child in the 21st century. I did not come to this thing to take a quiz, nor do I want to depress myself with how much money I’ll never have again.

Speaking of guessing things, I don’t have any desire to place bets on how big I think the pregnant lady’s belly is. She’s not a race horse and this isn’t Vegas, for Christ’s sake. IT’S BIG, OK? I know it, you know it, and she sure as hell knows it. Like she needs another reminder that she’s the size of an adult rhinoceros right now.

Also? I’m not sniffing the jars of baby food and theorizing what flavor they are. Get outta here with that. Feel free to sit over in your little corner and huff away, but I can barely stomach that crap when I’m feeding it to my own children. I didn’t con somebody into babysitting my brood so I could go throw up in my mouth at someone else’s house.

Oh, and to answer your 20 questions about how well I know the mom-to-be, it’s not well at all. Chances are, I’m only here because she’s my husband’s third cousin’s wife and I was forced to come on threat of divorce, so to everything on that list — eye color, birth date, kindergarten graduation, and first boo boo — my response is I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE. Even if she is a close friend or relative, I still don’t know. I can barely keep track of my own life stats.

And I swear to Mary, if you make me pin one more sperm on one more egg, I will cut you. This is not a joke.

No one in her right mind likes these games, so cut it out. Not even you like them, hostess. Just admit it. No one will string you up by your toenails for thinking it. (But if you tell us we have to participate in that sing-song voice one more time? All bets are off.)

Know what you can do? Feed us booze and sandwiches and tell us we’re pretty. Or just give us the booze and sandwiches. That’ll do just fine.

And let the poor pregnant woman eat her weight in pastries, open her damn presents, and get on home as quickly as possible so she can remove her support hose, try in vain to do a number two for the eleventieth time today, and plop her cankles up on a big ol’ stack of elevated pillows.

For the love of all that is sacred. Please.